RJ04-Reflective Journal Entry 4- Due Sunday, March 27, 2010
Most of you have been teaching for several weeks. Patterns are probably beginning to emerge and classroom routines are probably making you feel more comfortable than you were when you started. Can you still see the teacher that you started this semester wanting to be? Are you satisfied that you're actually teaching or are you concerned that you may be getting immersed in playing the "game of school*?" Assess your teaching so far. What are you doing well, and what do you know you need to work on? What evidence are you seeing for both your successes and difficulties? What are you determined to change and why?
Throughout the semester, I think I have learned and grown in ways that are helping me become the teacher I set out to be in January. I wanted to be a well-rounded teacher – the teacher who had a lot of knowledge about the content, who also had new and exciting lesson ideas to engage students, and who students could come to when they had a problem or needed someone to talk to. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to be that teacher, but that is the image of the teacher I wanted to become. I have gained so much confidence in myself in the past seven weeks – there is no way I will settle for being less than that teacher I set out to be. Before starting student teaching I was very nervous. I knew that I loved the idea of teaching and I knew that I loved the students – but I was very afraid that I would transition from observer to teacher and I wouldn’t be good at it, or even worse, that I wouldn’t love it anymore. As the initial nerves wore off, I realized that I truly did love to teach and it is something that I can be very good at.
I see myself becoming the “good” teacher I set out to be. I try to eliminate the “game of school” as much as possible. Instead of assigning bookwork and worksheets and allowing students to do what they want for 90 minutes, I try to make my lessons interesting and worthwhile so students will want to pay attention. There are days that it is hard to avoid, and some days I do see the “game of school” play out, especially in the class I have been having trouble with. My biggest difficulty at this time is trying to get that class to engage in what we are doing and become active learners. They have been playing the “game of school” all year and they love it – they are very reluctant to allow me to turn our class into a learning environment. It would be very easy for me to cave and just play the “game of school” with this class, but that is not what I want to do. I know I have a lot to offer to the class, I am just struggling with how to get them to hear me.
So far, I think my strengths have been in planning and executing my units. I have become very comfortable with my students, with the 90 minute periods, and with all the ins and outs of planning classes, activities, and labs. Now that I am comfortable in my environment and familiar with the school and my students, I have been able to plan a lot of engaging activities that my students have really enjoyed. I am very proud of how I constructed my last unit so that each topic tied into the next and the final assessment was a great combination of all the topics we learned about and the activities we did. It is becoming much easier for me to look at each unit as a whole, instead of looking at individual lessons and trying to figure out how to mesh them all together.
Now that I am comfortable with the planning and teaching side of teaching, I would like to put some focus on building relationships with my students. At first I was afraid to let my students see me as anything else than their teacher, but now I am starting to realize that it is important that they also see me as a person. Building relationships with students and allowing them to see that we all have things in common will help me teach them, it will help them find what I’m saying to be important, and it will help them relate what they learn in class to the outside world. Another difficulty that I am having is in classroom management. I think that once I get to know my students better and they get to know me, this will become less of an issue. I do think that I have already learned a lot about classroom management and how to deal with the “trouble-makers” but I definitely believe that I have room to improve.
Most of you have been teaching for several weeks. Patterns are probably beginning to emerge and classroom routines are probably making you feel more comfortable than you were when you started. Can you still see the teacher that you started this semester wanting to be? Are you satisfied that you're actually teaching or are you concerned that you may be getting immersed in playing the "game of school*?" Assess your teaching so far. What are you doing well, and what do you know you need to work on? What evidence are you seeing for both your successes and difficulties? What are you determined to change and why?
Throughout the semester, I think I have learned and grown in ways that are helping me become the teacher I set out to be in January. I wanted to be a well-rounded teacher – the teacher who had a lot of knowledge about the content, who also had new and exciting lesson ideas to engage students, and who students could come to when they had a problem or needed someone to talk to. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to be that teacher, but that is the image of the teacher I wanted to become. I have gained so much confidence in myself in the past seven weeks – there is no way I will settle for being less than that teacher I set out to be. Before starting student teaching I was very nervous. I knew that I loved the idea of teaching and I knew that I loved the students – but I was very afraid that I would transition from observer to teacher and I wouldn’t be good at it, or even worse, that I wouldn’t love it anymore. As the initial nerves wore off, I realized that I truly did love to teach and it is something that I can be very good at.
I see myself becoming the “good” teacher I set out to be. I try to eliminate the “game of school” as much as possible. Instead of assigning bookwork and worksheets and allowing students to do what they want for 90 minutes, I try to make my lessons interesting and worthwhile so students will want to pay attention. There are days that it is hard to avoid, and some days I do see the “game of school” play out, especially in the class I have been having trouble with. My biggest difficulty at this time is trying to get that class to engage in what we are doing and become active learners. They have been playing the “game of school” all year and they love it – they are very reluctant to allow me to turn our class into a learning environment. It would be very easy for me to cave and just play the “game of school” with this class, but that is not what I want to do. I know I have a lot to offer to the class, I am just struggling with how to get them to hear me.
So far, I think my strengths have been in planning and executing my units. I have become very comfortable with my students, with the 90 minute periods, and with all the ins and outs of planning classes, activities, and labs. Now that I am comfortable in my environment and familiar with the school and my students, I have been able to plan a lot of engaging activities that my students have really enjoyed. I am very proud of how I constructed my last unit so that each topic tied into the next and the final assessment was a great combination of all the topics we learned about and the activities we did. It is becoming much easier for me to look at each unit as a whole, instead of looking at individual lessons and trying to figure out how to mesh them all together.
Now that I am comfortable with the planning and teaching side of teaching, I would like to put some focus on building relationships with my students. At first I was afraid to let my students see me as anything else than their teacher, but now I am starting to realize that it is important that they also see me as a person. Building relationships with students and allowing them to see that we all have things in common will help me teach them, it will help them find what I’m saying to be important, and it will help them relate what they learn in class to the outside world. Another difficulty that I am having is in classroom management. I think that once I get to know my students better and they get to know me, this will become less of an issue. I do think that I have already learned a lot about classroom management and how to deal with the “trouble-makers” but I definitely believe that I have room to improve.